Pathogen

Inspiration

Most people are unaware of the diseases spreading in their community and thus do not take precautions to take to avoid them. We built this app with the idea, prevention is better than cure.

What it does

The mission is to help people keep themselves safe by monitoring diseases around the world in real time, particularly those prevalent in each user's area, and offering them tips from the WHO and CDC to reduce their chances of contraction. It works on two ends. The doctor can quickly register and then report the number of cases of various infectious diseases that he/she saw. On the other end, the user (and the doctor) is able to view a map showing the geographic distribution of the diseases, progression through a timeline feature, and severity through changes in color intensity.

How we built it

Since we had two iOS programmers on the team, we decided that the best representation for our project would be an iOS application. We began programming with Xcode and created the user interface using the Interface Builder. Additionally, we used Swift to programmatically set up the interface and run algorithms in the background to filter our data based on user input. Firebase was our choice of database since it was easiest to setup. Photoshop was used for all graphic design.

Challenges we ran into

We initially imagined a simple application which we estimated would take 10 hours to program. However, as we became more ambitious, we decided to add functionality which increased program complexity and essentially tripled our programming time. Features which we took for granted, such as drawing circles actually ended up being more cumbersome. Additionally we had problems with scoping variables since we did not follow a MVC design.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Despite all these challenges and lack of sleep, we managed to produce a functioning prototype that has some serious potential in public health.

What we learned

We learned to work with each other since we have different backgrounds and expertise, and how to delegate responsibilities.

What's next for Pathogen

This is a public health initiative, and we aim to take it to doctors around the world. First, we will seek input from public health experts at the Bloomberg School of Public Health and then we will begin to implement this program in Baltimore. If it succeeds, we will expand and take it to other cities in the US, and eventually around the world. One feature that we want to include, that we have not been able to in this prototype, is connecting this platform with the programs doctors use in the office when seeing patients, writing the diagnosis and course of treatment. We believe that this app will become more convenient for doctors if diagnoses can be pulled automatically and confidentially from these medical programs, without requiring the doctor to enter in the data.